


The Sky is Falling

by Lavendergaia



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:54:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2772038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavendergaia/pseuds/Lavendergaia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma takes Fitz on a late night field trip and they finally have a chance to talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sky is Falling

**Author's Note:**

> "Stargazing" was a prompt for Fitzsimmons week and I never got to finish my contribution before season 2 started and it got completely Jossed. This is a reworking of that story taking into account season 2. It's been about two years since my Archaeoastronomy course, so any astronomy knowledge herein comes from Stellarium and random websites I googled.

Fitz tossed and turned in the small bunk, wrapping the comforter tighter around himself. Fitz had expected that being back in his old bunk would be sort of comforting, but he found that he couldn’t find a good position to fall asleep. He couldn’t believe he was missing the Playground—well, maybe not the Playground itself, but definitely the beds. They were just _bigger_. At least when he couldn’t sleep at the base, there was more room in which he couldn’t sleep. Part of him wished that they hadn’t decided to stay grounded for the night and had decided to fly back, but May had gotten pretty beat up during the mission and needed the rest and they hadn’t brought any other pilots with them. At least with the Bus in the air, the rumbling of the engine might lull him to sleep.

He rolled on to his back to stare up at the ceiling when there was a sharp knock on his door. Frowning, he pushed his blanket aside and stood up, taking the short step to slide open the door. He blinked against the light of the hallway, then blinked again in surprise at Jemma standing there fully clothed in a thick jumper. “J-Jemma?” He ran a hand through his hair and bit his lip. “What’s going, uh, what’s…what’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry if I woke you,” she said, tucking her hair behind her ears anxiously even as she smiled at him.

“Nah, you, it’s fine.” He looked up and down the hallway, looking for everyone else. “Mission?”

She shook her head quickly. “No, no, everything’s ok. This is going to sound a bit crazy,” she warned him. “But would you mind getting dressed and coming with me?”

Licking his lips, he said, “Come…come with you where?” He glanced back into his bunk. “It’s one in…it’s one A.M.”

“I know. It’s a surprise.” When he hesitated, her smile faltered, but she quickly recovered. “Never mind. It’s silly. In fact, it’s quite late, there’s really no reason for either of us to be up so late. Please, go back to bed, I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“I want to go,” he said before she could leave. Her brown eyes widened with hope and he swallowed hard. “Let me just put on some clothes.”

The smile she gave him was blindingly bright. “Dress warm. It’s cold out.”

After changing out of his admittedly very cozy pajamas and into a sweater and jeans, he searched for her until he found her downstairs in the garage standing next to the SUV. “I’ve got your coat,” she told him, holding it out for him to put on. “And a scarf and some gloves, and a hat just in case, it really is supposed to be quite chilly.” She herself was completely bundled up and Fitz felt his heart skip a beat when he recognized the scarf and hat set he had gotten her for Christmas a few years back when they had visited his mum in Glasgow.

As she looked on earnestly, he finished getting ready. “Are we allowed to, you know, leave?”

“Oh, yes, I got permission from Coulson earlier this evening,” she said, holding up the keys to the car. “Did you want to drive? You’ve always been a much better driver than me.”

“Jemma?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know where we’re going.”

She nodded once. “Right. Guess I should drive then.” Jemma opened the hatch to the trunk of the SUV, double checking the contents before seeming satisfied at what she saw. “I’m ready to go when you are,” she said.

Shrugging, Fitz got into the passenger seat of the SUV, knee bouncing nervously. After lowering the ramp, Jemma hopped into the driver’s seat, buckling herself in with an extraordinarily pleased expression on her face. “I made us some tea for the road,” she said, nodding to the two travel mugs in the cup holders. “The blue one is yours.”

To be polite, Fitz picked it up and took an experimental sip. As he should have probably expected, it was perfect—perfect temperature, just the right amount of sugar, and a really fine blend of Earl Grey. Normally he knew she was a chamomile or some other herbal blend this late at night, but he guessed when setting off into the darkness at ass o’clock in the morning, decaffeinated wasn’t the best bet. “Thanks,” he said finally, noticing her pointedly focusing on him instead of the road.

She smiled at him quickly before she pulled on to what seemed like some back highway, but it was hard to tell with so few streetlights. “You can put on some music if you’d like.” The SUV had satellite radio and while it was usually set on a news station, Skye had programmed in some actual music and he was pretty sure there was a jazz channel in there for Coulson as well.

“I’m…I’m okay,” he said, taking another sip of his tea.

They drove in silence for a long time, seeming to get further and further away from civilization. If his life were a horror movie—and, Fitz realized, it so often was—this would be about the time he would wonder if Jemma had been double checking for a shovel in the back. She did seem to know where she was going even when they had been driving on what was essentially a dirt road for almost ten minutes. Finally, she pulled to the side of the road-type thing and killed the engine to the car. “We’re here!”

He looked out the windshield, barely able to make out some hills and grass under the bit of light from the sliver of the waning crescent moon. “Where uh…is this even a here?”

Giggling joyously, Jemma opened her door, setting off the interior light of the SUV. “Help me get the stuff from the trunk?”

The stuff from the trunk turned out to be an enormous stack of blankets (Fitz would wager that it was possibly every spare blanket that the Bus even had plus the one from her bed), a cooler, and (okay, this was starting to make more sense) a telescope. Between the two of them, they were able to make it up the grassy knoll in one trip. When they made it to the top, Fitz stared breathlessly up at the sky—so far away from artificial light, he could see most of the constellations much more clearly than he would have ever expected.

Jemma was attempting to lay out one of the large blankets like a tarp and Fitz cleared his throat, moving to grab the other side. “Lemme,” he said, helping her spread it out. Once it was down and anchored with the cooler and some other blankets, he looked at her carefully. “Jemma, why…why are…”

“We here?” She bit her bottom lip, avoiding his gaze. “I just, well, I wanted to do something nice, and I know this is a bit of a strange something nice, but—”

She was cut off by his sudden gasp as he watched a meteor fall from the sky. “Wait,” Fitz said, tearing his eyes from the east horizon to look at her. “This isn’t?”

“The meteor shower tonight. It’s…it’s the Leonids.”

Fitz opened and closed his mouth several times. Watching the Leonids had been a yearly tradition when they had been at the Academy, one they had continued even after they had graduated. The meteor shower had usually come during midterms and they had used the appearance of the Lenoids as an excuse to get off campus for a night and enjoy the tranquility of nature, to forget about papers and exams and just be with each other. With everything that had happened in the past year, he had completely forgotten that it was that time again.

“I know that we didn’t get to see them last year because we were traveling and it hadn’t been possible, but when I realized that it was tonight and that we weren’t going to be in the air, I asked Coulson and he said it would be okay,” she said quickly. “It was always our tradition, after all. Watching your meteor shower. And it’s really such a nice night out.” She gestured up to the cloudless sky; even the crescent moon was helpful for stargazing and watching the meteor shower.

Sensing her anxiety, Fitz nodded. “It would, uh, yeah, be a shame to waste the…the…the opportunity.”

Shoulders dropping with relief, Jemma said, “Right. I made sandwiches and brought other snacks and drinks. No more tea because it would be difficult to brew out here, but there’s cocoa. And beer.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Beer?”

“Thought we could use a drink.”

She was probably not wrong. “Do you want to set up th-the t-telescope?”

Shaking her head, she sat down on the blanket and crossed her legs, looking up at the sky. “You’ll do it much faster than I will.”

Really, he knew she was trying to be supportive, but faux reassurance never helped anyone. “Jemma, don’t—”

“Fitz,” she said sharply, interrupting him. “Look.” When he glanced over at her, he saw that she had already put mittens on _over_ her gloves. He didn’t think she’d be able to open a can of soda, let alone set up the telescope. There was a distinct possibility that Jemma was actually coldblooded. “You’ll be much faster with the telescope than I would.”

“Right,” he huffed, setting to work on it. It actually didn’t take him as long as he expected—it was a commercial model, meant for general backyard use to be set up by 10-year-olds and their parents who couldn’t do much more than change a light bulb, not the professional models that they used to sneak off campus. When he looked back over at Jemma to tell her of his success, she was smiling at him and offering him the top of a thermos.

“Cocoa?”

He took it with a nod of thanks. Somehow, the little marshmallows hadn’t completely melted yet. Those were his favorite part. They sat in silence for a moment, sharing the hot chocolate between them when Fitz noticed her shoulders shaking. “You’re cold.”

She put the empty thermos back into the cooler, giving him a small smile. “I’m fine, really.”

Rolling his eyes, Fitz reached for one of the smaller blankets that was weighing down a corner of the large blanket they were sitting on. Shaking it out, he knelt next to Jemma and wrapped it around her shoulders. After hesitating a second, he rubbed her shoulders to generate friction and warmth, only stopping when he felt Jemma’s hand settle on his. “Thank you, Fitz,” she whispered.

“Dunno how…” He stopped and licked his lips. “How you, ah, ever made it through winter back in…”

“England?” She smiled at him. “Mostly stayed inside with books. Always did love spring through, so many fun samples and specimens to collect after all the snow had melted.” She laughed lightly. “Think it always worried my parents a bit.”

He couldn’t help but grin at her. Suddenly, her face lit up as she pointed out east. “Look! Meteor!”

They watched in silence for a few minute before he moved over to the telescope, looking in the direction of the shower before pointing it north. He found Polaris at the tail of Ursa Minor, then looked over at Ursa Major. “You can get a really good look at C-C-Cassiopeia from here,” he said, wincing.

“Mmm, the queen,” she said eagerly, pulling her cap off her head to run her fingers through her hair.

Fitz held out the telescope to her and Jemma crawled over, careful not to lose her blanket. She looked at Cassiopeia and the dippers before pointing it back east. The uppermost stars of Virgo, her own star sign, was low on the horizon, barely in view with the hills but he could see her following the path of the constellations. “Leo,” she murmured warmly, a smile playing on her lips. She glanced up at him, happiness in her eyes as she said, “Jupiter is clearly visible between Leo and Cancer, the meteor shower is going right through it. You know, it really is a pity neither of us were more into astronomy, it really is a beautiful science. I mean, not as beautiful as say, chemical compositions or cell structure, but still, quite lovely.”

He shook his head, grinning despite himself. Only Jemma. “I was a, um, a rocket scientist, you know.”

The telescope fell out of her hand as she turned to stare at him. “Fitz, please.”

Turning to look out at the stars in order to avoid her intense gaze, he said, “You…you know what…”

“I know what you meant. Please don’t say that. You _are_ a rocket scientist. Please, you have to know that.” She visibly paused before reaching out to put her hand on his shoulder, but she squeezed firmly once she touched him. There was a determination in her voice. “And _I_ know you hate it when people call you that because you hardly even make rockets and rocket science is really not that difficult of a science, it’s not the 1960’s anymore, children fire rockets in their backyards. _You_ are an engineer and what you make—what you make now, not just what you’ve made in the past—is far more advanced and ingenious than simple rocket science.”

His mouth was suddenly very dry and he swallowed hard. Unsure of how to respond to that, he just nodded. “Th-thank you.”

“There’s no need,” she said softly. “But you’re welcome.” Her hand slowly drifted off his shoulder and she picked the telescope back up. He could hear her breathing hard, watched her chest move up and down. “Draco, Ursa Major,” she said lightly, naming the stars so far above them. “Lynx, another meteor from Leo, Cancer, oh!”

He looked at her sharply, eyes wide as she dropped the telescope as if it had burned her. “What? What’s…what’s happening?” When she didn’t answer right away, he put his hand on her back tenderly, trying to get her to look at him. “J-Jemma?”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry, Fitz. It’s silly.”

“It’s not, ah, it can’t be silly. What’s wrong?”

Keeping her eyes trained on the ground, refusing to meet his gaze, she whispered, “Hydra.” As his blood went cold, she said, “The…the constellation. Not…not actual Hydra. I just…I forgot it was there. It surprised me. I don’t know how I could forget about it, it’s really one of the larger ones. I saw it and I just recalled the name immediately and I was startled.” She attempted a smile, but her anxiety won out. “I told you it was silly.”

He rubbed her back in slow circles. “It’s not.”

Taking a deep breath, she seemed reluctant to pull away as she moved over to where she had left the cooler. “Are you hungry? I made sandwiches.”

Fitz accepted the plastic bag, stomach grumbling as he got a whiff of pesto aioli. For just a moment, he thought of the one sandwich he had never gotten to eat, wondered if he should have realized at that moment that Ward was a traitorous bastard when he couldn’t even eat his damn sandwich. He wondered if he’d ever be able to eat his favorite meal again without thinking of his least favorite person in the world. He wondered if he’d ever be able to tell Jemma about it.

He must have been staring at her while in his reverie because she said, “Oh!” and opened the cooler, pulling out two bottles of beer and handing one to him. “Sorry, should have thought of that right away.” Jemma held her bottle out to him, raising her eyebrows in hopeful expectation. “Cheers?”

After tapping his bottle against hers, Fitz twisted the top off and took a large gulp. He suspected he’d need a bit extra courage for what he was about to ask. “What…um…what was it like?”

“Hmm?”

“What was it like…there?” They had never talked about it. They hadn’t talked about much at all since she had returned, not unless absolutely necessary. He wasn’t completely sure if this was information he was worthy of knowing. But the way she had reacted just thinking the word…he had to ask, if it was something she wanted to talk about at all. He wanted to hear what she needed to say.

Jemma took a bite of her sandwich, chewing slowly before swallowing. “I was terrified all the time. It didn’t even feel like being scared anymore because I always was, you know? I don’t think I got used to it, per se, but it was so constantly present that it was just a drain on my energy to even acknowledge it.” She took a sip of beer. “I felt underappreciated. It was like when we first went to Sci-Ops when I worked for that awful agent, the sexist one who didn’t want me to do any actual science despite me having graduated early at the top of the Academy? But then we got our own lab and I didn’t have to see him anymore; he was probably Hydra now that I think about it. But they were all like that. They called me ‘Miss.’” She made a disgusted face and he snorted into his beer.

“But the worst of it was…” She glanced at him, hesitating. “The worst part was how lonely it was. Obviously I wasn’t going to have a chat about television with the sociopath at the next desk. And Coulson came by to check up and get intel and sometimes May, but those were mostly business things. I never realized how much I took for granted how wonderful it was just to have someone around to talk to about simple things—science and shows and tea and how my day went.” She wrapped up the rest of her sandwich and stuck it back in the cooler. “That was one of the hardest parts. Just the loneliness. Wanting someone there and knowing that they weren’t.”

He ate the last several bites of his prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella, then crumpled his trash into a ball. “Would y-you do it a-again?”

Jemma drank her beer for a long moment. “We did get some very solid intelligence, Bobbi and I. It wasn’t wasted, as a mission, even with our covers blown.” She turned her head and caught his eye. “And nothing I experienced there was more terrifying than the thought that you wouldn’t get better with me around.” Fitz opened his mouth, desperate to think of anything to respond, but Jemma cut him off, saying, “You really have gotten remarkably better during my absence. I know you don’t think so because it’s hard to see that in oneself, but it’s true. There have been improvements in every part of your recovery. I see it whenever I look at you. It’s hard to know what should just be attributed to time and effort, but…usually progress plateaus the further you get from initial trauma, it doesn’t increase. And if all I had to do was agree to go undercover, despite the fear and the loneliness, I would do it in a heartbeat just knowing you would get better.” She put her hands in her lap, clasping them tightly together. “I’d do anything for you.”

Chugging the rest of his beer, Fitz set the empty bottle aside. As Jemma looked out over the dark night sky, watching the meteors fall, he reached for the stack of blankets. Setting one of the larger ones aside, he adjusted the other ones into two equal piles and moved them on to the blanket they were sitting on. Content with his set up, he reached out and gently touched Jemma’s arm to get her attention. She looked at him quickly, eyebrows quirked up in question.

He spread out on the blanket, laying out until his head was resting on one of the stacks of blankets like a pillow. Patting the one next to it, he gave her a small, inviting smile. Immediately, Jemma lay down next to him, on her side so she was facing him rather than the meteor shower. Fitz reached for the lone blanket he had set aside and placed it on top of them; she moved even closer so that their legs were almost touching.

They listened to the peacefulness of the night until Fitz cleared his throat. “I would…I would have r-rather not, ah, have g-gotten better if it meant you wouldn’t l-leave.”

“Fitz—”

“But then you…you…you might not want to. To stay, I mean.”

She bit her lower lip hard as she stared at him and he instantly wanted to take the words back. “That’s not true,” she choked out. “ _You_ are who I…” She swallowed around a lump in her throat. “You’re my best friend. Nothing else matters to me. But I know it matters to you and I would never impede your progress or get in the way of something that would make you happy.”

“You make me happy.” It came out as a whisper but he could tell she had heard him.

There were unshed tears in her eyes as she wrapped her gloved hand around his. “Make or… Make or made?”

The question was like a punch in the stomach and Fitz reached out to settle them both, running his knuckles lightly over her cheek. “Make. Always…always make.”

The relief on her face was startling and she smiled, leaning in to press her forehead against his. She was trembling a little and Fitz wasn’t sure if it was because of the cold or something else, but he wrapped his arm around her anyway, pulling her against him. Jemma made a small noise of contentment as she tucked her head beneath his cheek, staring up at the sky as he held her close.

As night was slowly edging further into day, more and more meteors were falling. “You know meteor showers are just debris of ice and dust as a comet passes the sun,” Jemma whispered, not taking her eyes off the sky.

Fitz nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

Swallowing hard, Jemma said, “Sometimes I feel like debris from the wreckage of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra.” Turning to look at him, he could see the tears rolling down her cheeks. “I don’t want to be debris anymore, Fitz.”

He wiped away her tears carefully. It wasn’t enough to soothe her; he couldn’t tell her it was going to be okay. “You are not ice and dust,” he said slowly. “You are the sun.”

Her eyes widened and she gazed at him with something akin to awe. Then, curling closer to him and clutching tightly to his jacket, she leaned back into his embrace to watch the lights fall from the sky.

It became increasingly difficult to see the meteor shower as dawn approached. He found himself less interested in the in the Leonids and more in watching Jemma’s face as she took in the stellar event. For perhaps the first time since she had returned, there were no lines of stress by her eyes. Her breathing was deep and even. A small smile of contentment graced her face. If he could ask the world for a single thing, it would be that she was always as happy as she was right at this moment.

As the sun continued to rise over the horizon, Fitz couldn’t help himself from reaching out and pushing Jemma’s hair back from her face. “When do we have t-to get back?”

She ran her hand down his arm, stopping at his wrist to push his layers up just slightly until she could peek at his watch. Scrunching her nose, she said, “Probably should have gotten on the road an hour ago.” When Fitz barked a laugh in disbelief, she rested her chin on his chest, staring at him intently. “I didn’t want to leave yet.”

“I think we have to go back, uh, eventually.” He smiled at her though, hand coming to lay on her shoulder.

“I know.” The look she gave him was indecipherable. Then, slowly, she leaned up and pressed her lips to his, kissing him firmly. Fitz froze for a moment before he kissed back, hand tightening on her coat. Even with the sun rising in the distance, he swore he could still see the stars.

When she pulled back, he was panting and Jemma’s smile was victorious and relieved and exhilarated. “Fitz,” she said, voice breathy and delighted. “I’m ready now.”

Before he could answer she was moving away, folding blankets and packing up everything into the cooler. In his daze, he still managed to get the telescope back into its case, but he watched Jemma out of the corner of his eye the whole time. When they had cleared everything off, he helped her fold the large blanket they had been sitting on. As they met in the middle, he handed it off to her, then held her face in his hands and kissed her again. She surged against him, leaning up on her toes, sighing against his mouth.

Their shoulders brushed against each other as they carried everything down the hill, and Fitz loaded everything into the trunk while Jemma started the SUV to turn on the heater. After he climbed into the passenger seat and clipped on his seatbelt, Jemma immediately slipped her hand into his. Fitz held on to her tightly, giving it a little squeeze.

They sat like that for the entire drive back, the sun rising behind them. As Jemma smiled at him, Fitz could almost believe that there would never be darkness again.


End file.
